OUR IMMEDIATE TASK

TheRussian working-class movement is today going through a period of
transition. The splendid beginning achieved by the Social-Democratic
workers’ organisations in the Western area, St. Petersburg, Moscow, Kiev,
and other cities was consummated by the formation of the Russian
Social-Democratic Labour Party (spring 1898). Russian Social-Democracy
seems to have exhausted, for the time being, all its strength in making
this tremendous step forward and has gone back to the former isolated
functioning of separate local organisations. The Party has not ceased to
exist, it has only withdrawn into itself in order to gather strength and
put the unification of all Russian Social-Democrats on a sound footing. To
effect this unification, to evolve a suitable form for it and to get rid
completely of narrow local isolation—such is the immediate and most
urgent task of the Russian Social-Democrats.

Weare all agreed that our task is that of the organisation of the
proletarian class struggle. But what is this class struggle? When the
workers of a single factory or of a single branch of industry engage in
struggle against their employer or employers, is this class struggle? No,
this is only a weak embryo of it. The struggle of the workers becomes a
class struggle only when all the foremost representatives of the entire
working class of the whole country are conscious of themselves as a single
working class and launch a struggle that is directed, not against
individual employers, but against the entire class of capitalists
and against the government that supports that class. Only when the
individual worker realises that he is a member
of the entire working class, only when he recognises the fact that his
petty day-to-day struggle against individual employers and individual
government officials is a struggle against the entire bourgeoisie and the
entire government, does his struggle become a class struggle. “Every
class struggle is a political
struggle”[1]—these
famous words of Marx are not to be understood to mean that any struggle of
workers against employers must always be a political
struggle. They must be understood to mean that the struggle of the workers
against, the capitalists inevitably becomes a political struggle
insofar as it becomes a class struggle. It is the task
of the Social-Democrats, by organising the workers, by conducting
propaganda and agitation among them, to turn their spontaneous
struggle against their oppressors into the struggle of the whole class,
into the struggle of a definite political party for definite
political and socialist ideals. This is some thing that cannot be achieved
by local activity alone.

LocalSocial-Democratic activity has attained a fairly high level in our
country. The seeds of Social-Democratic ideas have been broadcast
throughout Russia; workers’ leaf lets—the earliest form of
Social-Democratic literature—are known to all Russian workers from
St. Petersburg to Krasnoyarsk, from the Caucasus to the Urals. All that is
now lacking is the unification of all this local work into the work of a
single party. Our chief drawback, to the overcoming of which we
must devote all our energy, is the narrow “amateurish”
character of local work. Because of this amateurish character many
manifestations of the working-class movement in Russia remain purely local
events and lose a great deal of their significance as examples for the
whole of Russian Social-Democracy, as a stage of the whole Russian
working-class movement. Because of this amateurishness, the consciousness
of their community of interests throughout Russia is insufficiently
inculcated in the workers, they do not link up their struggle sufficiently
with the idea of Russian socialism and Russian democracy. Because of this
amateurishness the comrades’ varying views on theoretical and practical
problems are not openly discussed in a central newspaper, they do not
serve the purpose of elaborating a common programme and devising common
tactics for the Party, they are lost in narrow study-circle life or they
lead
to the inordinate exaggeration of local and chance peculiarities. Enough
of our amateurishness! We have attained sufficient maturity to go over to
common action, to the elaboration of a common Party programme, to
the joint discussion of our Party tactics and organisation.

RussianSocial-Democracy has done a great deal in criticising old
revolutionary and socialist theories; it has not limited itself to
criticism and theorising alone; it has shown that its programme is not
hanging in the air but is meeting the extensive spontaneous movement among
the people, that is, among the factory proletariat. It has now to make the
following, very difficult, but very important, step—to elaborate an
organisation of the movement adapted to our conditions. Social-Democracy
is not confined to simple service to the working-class movement: it
represents “the combination of socialism and the working-class
movement” (to use Karl Kautsky’s definition which repeats the
basic ideas of the Communist Manifesto); the task of
Social-Democracy is to bring definite socialist ideals to the spontaneous
working-class movement, to connect this movement with socialist
convictions that should attain the level of contemporary science, to
connect it with the regular political struggle for democracy as a means of
achieving socialism—in a word, to fuse this spontaneous movement
into one indestructible whole with the activity of the revolutionary
party. The history of socialism and democracy in Western Europe, the
history of the Russian revolutionary movement, the experience of our
working-class movement—such is the material we must
master to elaborate a purposeful organisation and purposeful tactics for
our Party. “The analysis” of this material must, however, be
done in dependently, since there are no ready-made models to be found
anywhere. On the one hand, the Russian working-class movement exists under
conditions that are quite different from those of Western Europe. It would
be most dangerous to have any illusions on this score. On the other hand,
Russian Social-Democracy differs very substantially from former
revolutionary parties in Russia, so that the necessity of learning
revolutionary technique and secret organisation from the old Russian
masters (we do not in the least hesitate to admit this necessity) does not
in any way relieve
us of the duty of assessing them critically and elaborating our own
organisation independently.

Inthe presentation of such a task there are two main questions that come
to the fore with particular insistence:
1) How is the need for the complete liberty of local
Social- Democratic
activity to be combined with the need for establishing a single—and,
consequently, a centralist—party? Social-Democracy draws its
strength from the spontaneous working-class movement that manifests itself
differently and at different times in the various industrial centres; the
activity of the local Social-Democratic organisations is the
basis of all Party activity. If, however, this is to be the
activity of isolated “amateurs,” then it cannot, strictly speaking,
be called Social-Democratic, since it will not be the organisation and
leadership of the class struggle of the proletariat. 2) How can
we combine the striving of Social-Democracy to become a revolutionary
party that makes the struggle for political liberty its chief purpose with
the determined refusal of Social-Democracy to organise political
conspiracies, its emphatic refusal to “call the workers to the
barricades” (as correctly noted by P. B. Axelrod), or, in general,
to impose on the workers this or that “plan” for an attack on
the government, which has been thought up by a company of revolutionaries?

RussianSocial-Democracy has every right to believe that it has provided
the theoretical solution to these questions; to dwell on this
would mean to repeat what has been said in the article, “Our
Programme.” It is now a matter of the practical solution to these
questions. This is not a solution that can be made by a single person or a
single group; it can be provided only by the organised activity of Social-
Democracy as a whole. We believe that the most urgent task of the moment
consists in undertaking the solution of these questions, for which purpose
we must have as our immediate aim the founding of a Party organ that
will appear regularly and be closely connected with all the local
groups. We believe that all the activity of the
Social-Democrats should be directed to this end throughout the whole of
the forthcoming period. Without such an organ, local work will remain
narrowly “amateurish.” The formation of the Party—if the
correct representation of that Party in a
certain newspaper is not organised—will to a considerable extent
remain bare words. An economic struggle that is not united by a central
organ cannot become the class struggle of the entire Russian
proletariat. It is impossible to conduct a political struggle if the Party
as a whole fails to make statements on all questions of policy and to give
direction to the various manifestations of the struggle. The organisation
and disciplining of the revolutionary forces and the development of
revolutionary technique are impossible without the discussion of all these
questions in a central organ, without the collective elaboration of
certain forms and rules for the conduct of affairs, without the
establishment—through the central organ—of every Party
member’s responsibility to the entire Party.

Inspeaking of the necessity to concentrate all Party
forces—all literary forces, all organisational abilities, all
material resources, etc.—on the foundation and correct conduct of
the organ of the whole Party, we do not for a moment think of pushing
other forms of activity into the background—e.g., local agitation,
demonstrations, boycott, the persecution of spies, the bitter campaigns
against individual representatives of the bourgeoisie and the government,
protest strikes, etc., etc. On the contrary, we are convinced that all
these forms of activity constitute the basis of the Party’s
activity, but, without their unification through an organ of the
whole Party, these forms of revolutionary struggle lose nine-tenths 01
their significance; they do not lead to the creation of common Party
experience, to the creation of Party traditions and continuity. The Party
organ, far from competing with such activity, will exercise tremendous
influence on its extension, consolidation, and systematisation.

Thenecessity to concentrate all forces on establishing a
regularly appearing and regularly delivered organ arises out of the
peculiar situation of Russian Social-Democracy as compared with that of
Social-Democracy in other European countries and with that of the old
Russian revolutionary parties. Apart from newspapers, the workers of
Germany, France, etc., have numerous other means for the public
manifestation of their activity, for organising the movement—
parliamentary activity, election agitation, public meetings,
participation in local public bodies (rural and urban), the open conduct
of trade unions (professional, guild), etc., etc. In place of all of
that, yes, all of that, we must be served—until we
have won political liberty—by a revolutionary newspaper, without
which no broad organisation of the entire working-class movement
is possible. We do not believe in conspiracies, we renounce individual
revolutionary ventures to destroy the government; the words of Liebknecht,
veteran of German Social-Democracy, serve as the watchword of our
activities: “Studieren, propagandieren,
organisieren”— Learn, propagandise, organise— and the
pivot of this activity can and must be only the organ of the
Party.

Butis the regular and more or less stable establishment of such an organ
possible, and under what circumstances is it possible? We shall deal with
this matter next time.